


Smiles

by Wanderer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Friendship/Love, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderer/pseuds/Wanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch is missing. Reese has a couple of epiphanies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smiles

Smiles  
by Wanderer

 

Reese has to figure out where to start looking, somehow.

 

But while he reviews the scene of Finch’s kidnapping and checks out all of Finch’s known haunts, just in case his kidnapper has either left any clues or ransom demands there, somewhere far below his fear and concern, he keeps thinking, oddly, of smiles. Finch’s smile crosses his mind more than once. 

 

He thrusts the memory away as irrelevant.

 

Much later that night, though, while he lies in bed seething with frustration and unable to sleep, he casts around for something to think of that will relax him, let him rest. He’ll need all his energy for the difficult task ahead, so though he’d rather not close his eyes, he knows some sleep is essential.

 

Still. For some strange reason, as soon as he closes his eyes, his mind takes the same mental detour -- back to smiles. This time, he lets it. It’s harmless enough, and maybe it’ll put him to sleep. So he lets his mind roam. Thinks about how many different kinds of smiles there are, and how some have nothing to do with amusement. The kind of smiles agents use, that defined his world for years before Finch found him. Angry smiles, full of scorn or derision. Hard, sarcastic ones. Cold ones that don’t reach the eyes. Cruel smiles, sharp as honed blades, meant to wound. Snow and Stanton come to mind, but then so does that parking garage, and older, even worse things. He thrusts their memories, and the hatred he feels for them both, away. They’re the furthest thing from relaxing.

 

He goes back to smiles.

 

The better kinds. Softer ones that shine with laughter, affection or love. 

 

Just for a second, he lets himself remember the best one of all: Jessica’s. How beautiful her smile was. Radiant, that’s the word. Her smiles were what he once lived for, when he was in combat. They sustained him in dark places. Just for a moment, they shine again in his memory. Then he moves on, before grief can take him over and spoil them. 

 

He’s starting to realize, this train of thought isn’t just a mere distraction. It has weight, it has meaning. He’s hunting for something in his head, working something out internally. He just doesn’t know what it is yet.

 

He remembers Finch’s smile again, and this time, he seizes on the memory with a fierce sense of satisfaction. Got it. That’s what he’s been hunting for.

 

But he still doesn’t know why. Finch doesn’t smile much; and almost never at Reese. The few times Finch has done it, it’s been nothing more than a brief quirk of his lips, as if a real smile might tax his facial muscles to the breaking point.

 

At first, Reese just shrugged it off. Put it down to the fact that they’d just started working together, so they were both still naturally wary of each other. Later, when they’d both relaxed a bit, but Finch’s apparent ‘No Smiling’ rule hadn’t, he decided it was because Finch is just really serious. Brilliant, but a geek who isn’t good with people. Reese tells himself it has nothing to do with him personally.

 

That illusion lasts until he follows a trail of Finch’s unintentional bread crumbs to Grace, and learns that Finch can, on occasion, be very good with people. So good, in fact, that he actually lived with someone; someone he intended to marry. The pictures she has scattered about her apartment of Finch smiling stun him. Somehow, the more he sees that smile, the more his feeling of triumph at learning what has to be one of Finch’s most precious secrets drains away, and he feels oddly cheated instead. 

 

Reese realizes belatedly that for some reason, those pictures of Finch have been bothering him ever since he saw them. That’s why they’re still floating through his head.

 

He didn’t dwell on them at the time. He was preoccupied with memories of Jessica then, and trying to figure out if he should ask Finch about her or not. If he’d be better off finding out if she came up as a number, or if knowing that would only make him want to cut his throat. Again.

 

He’s past that now. Though Finch didn’t really answer that question directly, Reese knows him well enough by now to fill in the blanks around Finch’s cautious words. He knows Finch would’ve saved Jessica if he could, and that’s enough. 

 

But he thinks it’s strange that in the midst of another crisis, namely Finch’s kidnapping, those memories of seeing his pictures in Grace’s apartment keep coming back. He wonders why he isn’t able to savor his little victory in finding Grace more, too. It’s weird to feel let down by that, when he’s been trying so hard for so long to unravel the mystery of Finch’s private life, and tracking Grace down is a big step in that direction. 

 

It isn’t Grace’s face that keeps returning to Reese’s memory though, or even the fact of her that bothers him. Why should it? Grace isn’t a threat to either of them. He can accept that Finch once loved and lost, too. Finch made her believe he’s dead, so he clearly has no intention of going back to her; and it’s the future that interests John. 

 

So why do the happy pictures of a smiling Harold in Grace’s apartment keep filling his head, and why do they annoy him? 

 

He shifts restlessly. He’s got enough mysteries to solve, he doesn’t need another one. But he can’t seem to let it go. He pokes gingerly at the memories, trying to figure it out. He’s surprised by the strong feelings that well up inside him when he does, as if they’ve only been waiting for him to acknowledge them. There’s dark stuff there. It feels like possessiveness. Anger, maybe even –

 

Shit. He suddenly realizes, he initially considered Grace a threat. What the hell? Innocent, unwary Grace, who let him into her apartment so readily, without even checking on the phony police badge he’d used to get in. Grace, who told him all about her fiance, Harold with such obvious affection that she’d hardly even needed any prompting. Grace, the gentle artist who clearly knows very little about security, who obviously loved Harold very much, and who just as obviously wouldn’t hurt a fly.

 

Is his ability to read people completely shot? Grace, a threat? 

 

Granted, once he had time to think it over, he decided she isn’t one. But that’s not exactly comforting, because when he looks harder at his reasons for that -- because she’s part of Finch’s past, because Finch clearly isn’t going back to her – it all adds up to the same thing.

 

Jesus. Am I jealous?

 

The veil that’s been over his eyes suddenly lifts, and just about everything he’s done since he first met Finch makes more sense now, in the fierce, blind surge of emotion that washes over him at that realization. All his little jokes, his offerings of green tea, his stubborn hunger to learn everything about Harold Finch… He closes his eyes and shakes his head. Fuck.

 

Has he really been that stupid? That blind?

 

He tells himself mockingly, If you need to ask the question…

 

That’s why the sweetness of Harold’s smiles in Grace’s pictures still bothers him. They seem like another secret that Harold’s been keeping from him, a side of Finch that Reese didn’t even know existed. They’re a part of him that Grace was given, gifted with, that Finch has never given John.

 

Oh yeah. He’s jealous as hell.

It’s so typical of him, he thinks bleakly. You’d’ve thought he could learn from his mistakes, but evidently not. He was too late with Jessica, and somehow, he never knew how desperately he craved the sweetness in the smiles Harold gave Grace, or how much he wants Harold and all his smiles for himself, until now, when it’s too late.

 

Now Harold’s gone. Kidnapped by a crazed yet highly intelligent woman. Root, aka Catherine Turing, aka god only knows who else. A woman Reese himself saved, because she masqueraded so cleverly as an innocent number, a victim. His biggest mistake since Elias, and one whose consequences are even more devastating to him. Every time Reese thinks of her, his hands want to clench into fists, and he sets his jaw so hard it aches. She fills him with searing rage, self hatred and futility.

 

The rage he can use, so he’ll nurture it. Stoke it, let it build slowly to a roaring inferno. The self hatred and futility he resists, because they’re counterproductive to his goal. Though he hasn’t figured out how yet, he’ll find a way to get Harold back. He failed to save Jessica. He can’t fail Harold too, and keep on living. It’s that simple. 

 

His purpose, his whole life has narrowed down to that one focal point, the heart of his internal fire: Find Finch. 

 

The numbers will have to wait for now. He can’t work them without Harold, and even if he could, he can’t afford the time. He’s gonna get Finch back, then kill the woman who stole him, no matter what Harold says. At least John imagines Finch won’t want that, but he doesn’t care. Anyone who’s crazy enough, bold and smart enough to trick them both and steal Finch right out from under his fucking nose, is too dangerous to live. End of story.

 

He’s gonna get Harold back, all right. And someday, some way, he’ll make Harold smile one of those wide, sweet, beautiful smiles at him. That’s the plan. 

 

Reese’s eyes suddenly snap wide open. His plan. He’s had an epiphany; and now he has a new plan. 

 

Reese has one resource left, one possible ally in his quest to rescue Harold that he hasn’t approached yet, because he didn’t think it was possible. In the beginning, he didn’t think that even Finch communicated directly with the Machine; but lately he’s begun to wonder. In any case, even if it is true, he has no idea how Finch does it, so he hadn’t known how to try it himself.

 

But he’d just had a vision of the cameras all over New York. The pitiless, silent, ever-vigilant eyes always watching everyone. The eyes of the Machine. Maybe they’re not really pitiless or silent. What if he can find a way to communicate with the – what, the software or the intelligence -- behind them? What if he just walks up to one and starts talking? Tells the Machine its creator has been kidnapped, and that he needs help finding him. What would happen? 

 

First thing tomorrow, he’ll find out. It’s a desperate, dangerous gamble; but those are Reese’s favorite kind. And to win one of Harold’s big, genuinely sweet smiles, there’s literally nothing he won’t do.

 

John smiles with anticipation, just thinking about it.

 

If that smile changes to something as cruel and treacherous as black ice in midwinter when he thinks of Root, and if his thoughts turn from smiles to all the myriad ways he knows to cause terrible pain and draw out death until someone begs for it, well. 

 

What’s that old saying? “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind”?

 

John's always liked that saying. It makes him smile.


End file.
